Listen to Aristotle
by Emma Rosen
The start to an LIU Global semester is filled with an abundance of new. Especially for me, as I started on a path to earlier graduation that led me to a new continent, with new classmates, new staff, and new subjects. We started our academic endeavors in two countries that are exceptionally old — Austria and Hungary: lands of rich culture, richer goulash, histories rife with conflict, and coincidentally, my ancestors.
Besides the obvious allure of Vienna and Budapest, what ended up branded on my brain from our first two weeks of study was a lesson. It’s quintessentially LIU Global, this lesson, and perhaps one of the greatest gifts any student, or for that matter, human, can be given. Aristotle sums it up perfectly: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” We were lucky enough to embark on a myriad of visits to institutions that most never have the chance to see.
We learned about the intricacies of maintaining European security at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and were allowed to sit in on a session of diplomats from Europe and around the world discussing the future of issues like human trafficking. We met and had a discussion with a member of the European Parliament, Eugen Freund, at the EU building in Vienna. We learned about the work of promoting interreligious peace at the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre For Interreligious And Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID). We heard from a representative for The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) about the role and impact of OPEC, and also visited their sister organization the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) who fund and facilitate needed projects in developing countries. We had a roundtable discussion at Central European University in Budapest with two men well-versed in the current political situation in Hungary. We were given a tour and a presentation at the United Nations in Vienna. The list goes on.
These experiences were varied in subject and tone, with some straying somewhat from our typical coursework at LIU Global. For example, as aspiring global citizens, we students tend to be inclined towards environmentally-friendly organizations. During our time in Costa Rica we spent class time and extracurricular time devoted to the study of climate change, and how to combat it. So going to OPEC did not at all feel like a natural choice. After all, it is no secret that oil is, shall we say, a blight on the environment. But the presentation given opened my mind up to a different perspective. Not to say that I went, listened, and joined a pro-fracking movement. Instead, I was presented with the idea that if oil is to be drilled, a country should have sovereignty over how they use it, and the market should be regulated to avoid economic strife in different sectors. At KAICIID the inspiring work they do was laid out for us, but there were lingering questions regarding their funding, as it is an organization named for the King of Saudi Arabia. So we had to think deeply about the implications of that, and whether or not we still believed it to be an ethical, impactful organization when the source of the money might not necessarily act ethically all the time. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
We are not Global students so that we can traipse around Europe and only see what we want to see. We aren’t tourists. We’re here to be challenged; to solidify our beliefs and then shake them up all over again. The world is more nuanced and complicated than any one of us knows, so in order to make a dent, it is imperative to see things from new points of view. It is imperative to consider things like petroleum prices, the mindset of Hungarian citizens who chose to vote for Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and intergovernmental organizations that can seemingly be toothless at times.
I can’t speak for the entire LIU Global Class of 2021, but I can certainly speak for myself, and I am incredibly grateful for these opportunities that stretch my brain and try my morals. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” By the end of my academic journey, I hope to have an educated mind by this definition. To change people’s minds and hearts you have to first understand them, so bring it on.
